"Nah, that doesn't have a very nice ring to it."

"Oh, I see, you want something fancy."

"Do I?"

"Something a bit more artful, at least," she snorts. "Hmm. Caper?"

That makes him laugh. "One would think you didn't enjoy being around me."

"Capers are fun! Stealing the ant egg counts as a caper, and it's more flattering than calling you 'egg thief'! Or knife, actually."

"They're just ants," he reiterates, waving a hand above his head. "And knife is about being—initially unassuming, deceptively common, but deviously resourceful and most of all with the capacity to be dangerous."

That word has a definitively approving tone, there.

"That is admittedly quite flattering, now I'm a little sorry I didn't accept it."

"Calendula is also initially unassuming, deceptively common, a pretty smile and a pretty face and a pretty colour. And yet she hides powers that most people don't know about, and you should not ignore how versatile she can be."

He's not looking at her, walking a few steps ahead and to the right, but he's smiling as he says it.

"Also good for burns in a pinch, if you don't have any aloe available!" she adds brightly, giggling.

"More than meets the eye, for certain."

She snorts. "What about Reverie?"

That makes him pause. "I like it."

"See? You wanted something fancy."

"Was that the sole criterion?"

"Nope!"

"Spin me a pretty tale."

"Oh? All right then. Once upon a time, there was a fisherman's daughter, who lived by the sea..."

He laughs but doesn't interrupt her tale.

"One day a lord of the selkies stepped onto the shore, set to woo and wed her, swearing not to return to the waves without her. Delighted, the fisher's daughter said she'd gladly go and wed him, but for the little problem of how she'd drown beneath the waves if she ran off into the ocean with a pretty selkie lord."

"The poor couple," he says solemnly.

"Quite. The seal lord was loyal to his chosen lady, though, refusing to abandon her to return to the sea. He swore to stay one night beside her, and be her husband, though it would mean his death." Her lip quirks. "His chosen lady was having none of that."

"Was she not?"

"Definitely not. She would not wed him just to watch him die. Instead, she'd bring him to speak to her wise grandmother, who might know of a way to let them be together for longer than a single night. Her grandmother knew of no way to aid the seal lord, but her mother had hidden a magic seal coat that she'd buried beneath the tree, and whomever wore it would become a selkie. In the single night the seal lord and his lady have on land together, they find and unearth the cloak. Just before the stroke of midnight, they make it back to sea, and she goes hand in hand with him to their watery kingdom."

"Awwww that's so romantic!"